Follow Blog via Email

Pages

Ode to Sue.

This past week has been really great, especially for me (Lisa). Meet Sue. Sue is one of my closest, best, quirkiest, most interesting, diverse friend that I have. We met when I was in high school in Vermont; Sue was the 5th & 6th grade teacher at the Christian school I grew up in. She came when I was in high school and her apartment became the hang-out spot for, well, pretty much everybody I, my sister, and my brother knew. We all LOVED Sue. She was one of my bridesmaids and one of the most influential mentors in my life.

Back in 2001, Sue came to Peru. I was here in January of 2001; Sue was here in June. She came down to help set up the home school system and teach English for her summer off from school. She loved it down here and swore she’d be back. That was eight years ago. She is now a nanny in California and hasn’t been back to Peru.

Until now.

We had a slight snafoo (my sister’s favorite word for “problem”) with getting the boy’s curriculum here for school. It’s all on CD’s and the company doesn’t ship overseas. We could’ve had somebody else mail it down, but then there’s the issue of customs. So, I had this genius idea to write Sue and see if she’d be willing to do the unthinkable: fly down to Peru for a few days to bring us the curriculum! And Sue, being the wonderful, crazy friend she is – said YES. She took ten days off of work and within a week of planning this whole excursion, she was on the plane for Lima. She left tonight.

It was such a God-send having her here. Not only was she able to answer all the questions in person that I had been emailing her about school, but she was able to give me tips on how to teach my special needs student! I have a ten year old little girl with Down’s Syndrome learning English and Sue was able to give me tips on how to make teaching her go much more smoothly. And the reason she was able to do all this is because she works with a child with autism and has done lots of research. So providential.

She went on an evangelism trip to an English Christian school. And she subbed for me for a day while we went to Lima to get our carnets. OH YES – we got our carnets this past week! Our carnets are our Peruvian I.D.’s, proving our residency. It’s much better than just a visa. The process is fairly simple, when everything goes as planned. There was a slight mishap with our paperwork, so the process for us took pretty much all day. We were gone from 6am to about 3pm. It was a LONG day, full of 4 taxi rides (an equivalent of about 5 hours in the car) and 4 hours of waiting. LONG DAY. BUT, it’s over, we have our carnets, and everything worked out just fine. Sue was even able to see how the school was running and give me even MORE ideas on how to make it better.

So ~ all in all, it was a wonderful week. It was great having a friend here, to be able to laugh and joke around in English, and to be able to show someone our new home. We also realized, as she was packing tonight and getting ready to take a long trip, how glad we are that we are NOT packing or taking a big trip. We are HOME. We spent our evening looking at ideas for tiles, bathroom fixtures, and furniture for our new home. We’re home. And it feels so good to be able to say that.

So…ode to Sue. We love you. We’ll miss you. But, thank you for coming. Thank you for being you. Please come again.

And if any of YOU want to come visit….we’ll have a spare bedroom and bathroom! =) And we’re good at the last minute visiting, too. Just, FYI…

I’m really happy for you! I tell you, is one thing to listen to you and another one to read what you’ve experienced! It’s great to know that you feel at home with us and that you are loving every second of it. May God bless you in more ways than you can ever imagine.